Food resilience behind business
Should supermarkets disappear and conventional food distribution fail, you’re going to want Matt Morris on your team.
The 43-year-old is sustainability officer at the University of Canterbury (UC), runs a cultured food company called Urban Monk and specialises in food resilience.
‘‘I had been very involved in the local food movement in Christchurch and nationally,’’ Morris said.
‘‘After the earthquake we developed a group called the Food Resilience Network, which was basically a network of thousands of people across the country, and I was coordinator of that.’’
Food resilience is the concept that people should face no physical or economic barriers to getting enough food to maintain an active and healthy life.
According to the 1996 World Health Organisation Food Summit, a key part of food resilience is having a local food production and distribution system that can withstand any natural or man-made crises.
‘‘We tried to figure our what our whole food system looked like and where the gaps were, and one of those gaps was good processing and adding value,’’ Morris said.
Growers and other members of the network suggested Morris delve into the world of cultured foods to help fill the gap.
‘‘I was making it already for myself, and never planned to make it commercially, but I was encouraged by that need for it,’’ he said.
By 2015, Urban Monk products were on the shelfs at Piko Wholefoods in central Christchurch. They can now be found in retailers from Auckland to Dunedin.
Their range includes four cabbage-based sauerkrauts and other products containing carrot and ginger, beetroot and onions. They produce tonics.
‘‘They are all fermented in the traditional way, so they are probiotic and use the wild culture method, so we don’t have any culture starter,’’ he said.
‘‘People are getting more used to these types of products. Before it was almost like taking medicine, but now people are realising there are more ways they can incorporate probiotics into their diet.’’
The company was originally based at Waihi Bush, near Geraldine, but moved to Sydenham in 2017.
At the core of Urban Monk was a belief in the ‘‘simple, traditional and low-tech’’, producing something with a regenerative impact, improving your health and ‘‘leaving you better’’.
‘‘That’s why I’m certified organic, that’s a really strong ethos with me,’’ he said.
Alongside running Urban Monk, Morris oversees and develops the sustainability programme at UC. He said a new framework was recently adopted including research, teaching and learning components relating to sustainable practices.
‘‘The role is quite broad because it does cover the traditional greening the campus stuff, but also teaching, learning and working with students, because that’s where we can have the biggest influence.’’